After 9/11, there will be media accounts suggesting some of the 9/11 hijackers trained at US military bases (see September 15-17, 2001). According to these accounts, four of the hijackers trained at Pensacola Naval Air Station, a base that trains many foreign nationals. One neighbor will claim that Ahmed Alghamdi lived in Pensacola until about August 2000. This neighbor will claim that Alghamdi appeared to be part of a group of Arab men who often gathered at the Fountains apartment complex near the University of West Florida. She will recount, “People would come and knock on the doors. We might see three or four, and they were always men. It was always in the evening. The traffic in and out, although it was sporadic, was constant every evening. They would go and knock, and then it would be a little while and someone would look out the window to see who it was, like they were being very cautious. Not your normal coming to the door and opening it.” [New York Times, 9/15/2001] It is not known when Alghamdi is first seen in Pensacola. However, he uses the address of a housing facility for foreign military trainees located inside the base on drivers’ licenses issued in 1996 and 1998. Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami also list the same address as Ahmed Alghamdi on their drivers license and car registrations between 1996 and 1998. Other records connect Hamza Alghamdi to that same address. However, the Pensacola News Journal reports that “The news articles caution that there are slight discrepancies between the FBI list of suspected hijackers and the military training records, either in the spellings of their names or in their birth dates. They also raise the possibility that the hijackers stole the identities of military trainees.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Pensacola News Journal, 9/17/2001] It is unclear if these people were the 9/11 hijackers or just others with similar names. The US military has never definitively denied that they were the hijackers, and the media lost interest in the story a couple of weeks after 9/11.

Hijacker Hani Hanjour moves from Florida to the San Francisco Bay area in California, staying with an unidentified family. He lives with them from late April to early September. For most of this time he takes English lessons in an intensive program requiring 30 hours of class time per week, at the ELS Language Center at Holy Names College in Oakland. He reportedly reaches a level of proficiency sufficient to “survive very well in the English language.” Yet in 2001, managers at an Arizona flight school will report him to the FAA at least five times, partly because they think his level of English is inadequate for him to keep his pilot’s license. Due to his poor English, it will take Hanjour five hours to complete an oral exam meant to last just two hours (see January-February 2001). At the end of this period, Hanjour enrolls on a rigorous one-year flight training program at the renowned Sierra Academy of Aeronautics, in Oakland. However, he only attends the 30-minute orientation class, on September 8, and then never returns. [CBS 5 (San Francisco), 10/10/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/10/2001; Associated Press, 10/11/2001; Cape Cod Times, 10/21/2001; Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 12/21/2001; Associated Press, 5/10/2002]

In late 1996, hijacker Hani Hanjour attends CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona for three months. This is normally adequate time to earn a private pilot’s certificate, but Hanjour fails to accomplish this. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001] Duncan Hastie, the school’s owner, finds Hanjour a “weak student” who is “wasting our resources.” According to Hastie, “He was not able to fly solo in a small plane, which is equivalent to getting out of a parking space [in a car] and stopping.” Hanjour returns to CRM in December 1997 with two friends: Bandar Al Hazmi, a Saudi like Hanjour, and Rayed Abdullah of Qatar. (There apparently is no family relationship between Bandar Al Hazmi and the two Alhazmi 9/11 hijackers.) Hanjour takes about three lessons, but still fails to complete the coursework necessary for a license to fly a single-engine aircraft. Subsequently, he phones the school about twice per year requesting more lessons, but, according to Hastie, “We didn’t want him back at our school because he was not serious about becoming a good pilot.” The final time Hanjour calls, in 2000, he requests training on a Boeing 757: the kind of plane he is alleged to have flown into the Pentagon on 9/11. [Newsday, 9/23/2001; Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001; Chicago Tribune, 10/2/2001; Cape Cod Times, 10/21/2001; Aviation International News, 11/2001; Washington Post, 9/10/2002]

On several occasion between 1996 and 1999, future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour attends flight schools in Arizona (see October 1996-December 1997 and 1998). The 9/11 Commission will later note, “It is clear that when Hanjour lived in Arizona in the 1990s, he associated with several individuals who have been the subject of counterterrorism investigations.” Some of the time, he is accompanied by two friends, Bandar Al Hazmi and Rayed Abdullah. Al Hazmi and Abdullah have been friends with each other in high school in Saudi Arabia, but it is not known if either knew Hanjour before moving to the US. Al Hazmi and Hanjour are roommates for a time. Al Hazmi will finish his training and leave the US for the last time in January 2000 (he apparently will be interviewed overseas in 2004). Abdullah becomes a leader of a Phoenix mosque where he reportedly gives extremist speeches. He will continue to train with Hanjour occasionally through the summer of 2001. The FBI apparently will investigate him in May 2001. He will repeatedly be questioned by authorities after 9/11, then move to Qatar. In 2004, the 9/11 Commission will report that the FBI remains suspicious of Al Hazmi and Abdullah, but neither man is charged with any crime. The 9/11 Commission will also imply that another of Hanjour’s Arizona associates is al-Qaeda operative Ghassan al Sharbi. Al Sharbi will be arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 with al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). He apparently is a target of Ken Williams’s “Phoenix memo”(see July 10, 2001). Another associate of Hanjour’s, Hamed al Sulami, is in telephone contact with a radical Saudi imam who is said to be the spiritual advisor to al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. This imam may have a role in recruiting some of the 9/11 hijackers. Abdulaziz Alomari, for instance, was a student of this imam. It seems that al Sulami is also a target of Williams’s memo. [Washington Post, 9/10/2002; US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 233, 520-521, 529]

Future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour begins associating with an unnamed individual who is later mentioned in FBI agent Ken Williams’s famous “Phoenix memo” (see July 10, 2001). Hanjour and this individual train at flight schools in Arizona (see October 1996-December 1997 and 1998). Several flight instructors will later note that the two were associates and may have carpooled together. They are known to share the same airplane on one occasion in 1999, and are at the school together on other occasions. The unnamed individual leaves the US in April 2000. In May 2001, the FBI attempts to investigate this person, but after finding out that he has left the US, it declines to open a formal investigation. The person’s name is not placed on a watch list, so the FBI is unaware that he returns in June and stays in the US for another month. By this time, he is an experienced flight instructor who is certified to fly Boeing 737s. The FBI speculates he may return to evaluate Hanjour’s flying skills or provide final training before 9/11. There is considerable circumstantial evidence placing this person near Hanjour in July 2001. [US Congress, 7/24/2003 ] This unnamed individual may be Lofti Raissi, as several details match him perfectly. For instance, Raissi is a flight instructor who left the US in April 2000, is later accused of having shared an airplane with Hanjour in 1999, and is accused of being with Hanjour in July 2001. [Guardian, 1/31/2002] In addition, according to FBI investigators, Raissi engages in a number of suspicious activities during this period that will justify scrutiny after 9/11. For example, in June 2000, while training at a British flight school, he reportedly asks, “if a plane flies into a building, whether it is the responsibility of the airline or the pilot,” and warns that “America will get theirs.” [9/11 Commission, 1/5/2004] Raissi will be arrested in Britain after 9/11 and accused of training Hanjour and other hijackers how to fly, but the case against him will collapse in April 2002. He will be released, and many of the allegations against him will be withdrawn (see September 21, 2001). No media accounts will report that Raissi was mentioned in the Phoenix memo or wanted for an FBI investigation before 9/11.

A military report released this year describes the “Joint Vision 2010” program, a series of “analyses, war games, studies, experiments, and exercises” which are “investigating new operational concepts, doctrines, and organizational approaches that will enable US forces to maintain full spectrum dominance of the battlespace well into the 21st century.”
“The Air Force has begun a series of war games entitled Global Engagement at the Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.” The same report mentions that the military is working on a “variety of new imaging and signals intelligence sensors, currently in advanced stages of development, deployed aboard the Global Hawk, DarkStar, and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)…” [US Department of Defense, 1998] Global Hawk is a technology that enables pilotless flight and has been functioning since at least early 1997. [US Department of Defense, 2/20/1997] While it may be mere coincidence, “Air Force spokesman Colonel Ken McClellan said a man named Mohamed Atta—which the FBI has identified as one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11—had once attended the International Officer’s School at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.” But he adds that “there [was] discrepancies in the biographical data” (mainly the birth date) and that “it may just be a case of mistaken identity” (see also 1996-August 2000 and September 15-17, 2001) [Gannett News Service, 9/17/2001; Gannett News Service, 9/20/2001]

Ken Williams. [Source: FBI]The FBI field office in Phoenix, Arizona, investigates a possible Middle Eastern extremist taking flight lessons at a Phoenix airport. FBI agent Ken Williams initiates an investigation into the possibility of Islamic militants learning to fly aircraft, but he has no easy way to query a central FBI database about similar cases. Because of this and other FBI communication problems, he remains unaware of most US intelligence reports about the potential use of airplanes as weapons, as well as other, specific FBI warnings issued in 1998 and 1999 concerning Islamic militants training at US flight schools (see May 15, 1998; September 1999). Williams will write the “Phoenix memo” in July 2001 (see July 10, 2001). He had been alerted about some suspicious flight school students in 1996, but it is not clear if this person was mentioned in that previous alert or not (see October 1996). [US Congress, 7/24/2003 ]

Sawyer Aviation logo. [Source: Sawyer Aviation]In January 1998, future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour and his friend Bandar Al Hazmi, who are now renting an apartment together in Phoenix, Arizona, train together at Arizona Aviation flight school. Hanjour supposedly receives his commercial pilot rating while there. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] Later in 1998, Hanjour joins the simulator club at Sawyer School of Aviation in Phoenix. According to the Washington Post, Sawyer is “known locally as a flight school of last resort.” Wes Fults, the manager of the flight simulator, says Hanjour has “only the barest understanding what the instruments were there to do.” After using the simulator four or five times, Hanjour disappears from the school. [Washington Post, 10/15/2001]

A view inside Atta’s Marienstrasse flat. [Source: DPA]Hijacker Marwan Alshehhi moved to Bonn, Germany in 1996, and studied German there. He then lived in Hamburg for several months in 1998, and returned to Bonn after failing a language exam. Just as he leaves town, a Pakistani student named Atif bin Mansour arrives in Hamburg, and begins living and studying together with Mohamed Atta. Early in 1999, Mansour applies with Atta for a room to hold a new Islamic study group. Mansour is a pilot on leave from the Pakistani Air Force. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, “This in itself is intriguing—a Pakistani pilot? Investigators acknowledge they haven’t figured out Mansour’s role in the plot, if any.” On this day, Mansour’s brother, also in the Pakistani armed forces, is killed (along with 15 other officers) when his surveillance plane is shot down by India. Mansour returns home and was detained and stopped from returning to Germany. Soon afterwards, Alshehhi returns to Hamburg. According to Mansoor’s father, “Atif was detained because he had not sought permission from the authorities before returning home to attend his younger brother’s funeral.” Then he is set free with assistance from a relative and works on Pakistani air force base. Contacted on his mobile phone by a reporter, Mansour says, “I won’t be able to speak further on such a sensitive issue.” [Rediff, 7/17/2002; Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002; Washington Post, 9/11/2002] In March 2001, Mohamed Atta applies together with a Pakistani Air Force pilot for a security job with Lufthansa Airlines (see February 15, 2001). This pilot is a member of the same Islamic study group as Mansour, but it’s not clear if this is Mansour and he did come back to or stay in Germany, or if Atta was associating with a second Pakistani Air Force pilot. [Roth, 2001, pp. 9f; Newsday, 1/24/2002] The FBI later notes that Alshehhi arrived “almost as a replacement” for Mansour. After 9/11, the FBI asks Pakistan if the flight lieutenant and squad leader Mansour can be found and questioned about any possible role he may have had in the 9/11 plot, but there’s no indication Pakistan as to whether has ever agreed to this request. [Rediff, 7/17/2002] In late 2002, the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations will say that Mansour remains “a very interesting figure.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002]

According to German investigations, by at least this time, the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell including Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh has come up with the idea of attacking the US using airplanes. This theory is based on witness statements and the discovery by the German police of a flight simulator file on a computer used by the Hamburg cell that was downloaded between January and October 1999. [Washington Post, 9/11/2002; Burke, 2004, pp. 244] Both Atta and Alshehhi start taking lessons on ultralight aircraft this year (see April 1999, October 1999, and December 1999). Some suggest they first joined the 9/11 plot in early 1999 (see Early 1999). However, the 9/11 Commission claims that the 9/11 plot was hatched by al-Qaeda’s leadership and was communicated to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell in Afghanistan in December 1999. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 165-169]

The Woodland Park Resort. [Source: Woodland Park Resort]9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta takes flying lessons in the Philippines, and 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi is with him. They stay at the Woodland Park Resort Hotel near Angeles City, which is about 60 miles north of Manila and near the formerly US controlled Clark Air Base. Victoria Brocoy, a chambermaid at the hotel, will later claim that Atta stayed at the hotel for about a week while he learned to fly ultra-light planes at the nearby Angeles City Flying Club. [Gulf News, 9/29/2001; Gulf News, 10/2/2001] She also says, “He was not friendly. If you say hello to him, he doesn’t answer. If he asks for a towel, you do not enter his room. He takes it at the door.… Many times I saw him let a girl go at the gate in the morning. It was always a different girl.” [International Herald Tribune, 10/5/2001] Atta stays with some other men who call him Mohamed. She recalls that one of them is Marwan Alshehhi, who is treated like Atta’s sidekick. However, there are no recollections of Alshehhi going to the nearby flight school. [Manila Times, 10/2/2001; Gulf News, 10/2/2001] She says Atta was hosted by a Jordanian named Samir, who speaks Filipino and runs a travel agency in Manila. She adds that many Arab guests stayed at the hotel between 1997 and 1999, and Samir always accompanied them. Samir denies knowing any of the hijackers. [Gulf News, 9/29/2001; Manila Times, 10/2/2001; International Herald Tribune, 10/5/2001] The Philippine military will later confirm that Atta and Alshehhi were at the hotel after finding four other employees who claim to have seen them in 1999. Other locals, such as the manager of a nearby restaurant, also recall seeing them. [Philippine Star, 10/1/2001; Gulf News, 10/2/2001; International Herald Tribune, 10/5/2001; Asia Times, 10/11/2001] Atta and/or Alshehhi were seen at the same resort in 1997 (see 1997) and will return to it later in 1999 (see December 1999). A leader of a militant group connected to al-Qaeda later confesses to helping 9/11 hijacker pilots while they were in this area (see Shortly After October 5, 2005).

A photocopy of Hani Hanjour’s 1999 pilot license. [Source: FBI] (click image to enlarge)When Hani Hanjour attended flight schools between 1996 and 1998 he was found to be a “weak student” who “was wasting our resources” (see October 1996-December 1997), and when he tried using a flight simulator, “He had only the barest understanding what the instruments were there to do.” (see 1998) Yet, on this day, he is certified as a multi-engine commercial pilot by Daryl Strong in Tempe, Arizona. Strong is one of many private examiners independently contracted with the FAA. A spokesperson for the FAA’s workers union will later complain that contractors like Strong “receive between $200 and $300 for each flight check. If they get a reputation for being tough, they won’t get any business.” Hanjour’s new license allows him to begin passenger jet training at other flight schools, despite having limited flying skills and an extremely poor grasp of English. [Federal Aviation Administration, 4/25/2002; Government Executive, 6/13/2002; Associated Press, 6/13/2002] At the next flight school Hanjour will attend in early 2001, the staff will be so appalled at his lack of skills that they will repeatedly contact the FAA and ask them to investigate how he got a pilot’s license (see January-February 2001). After 9/11, the FBI will appear to investigate how Hanjour got his license and question and polygraph the instructor who signed off on his flying skills. The Washington Post will note that, since Hanjour’s pilot skills were so bad, the issue of how he was able to get a license “remains a lingering question that FAA officials refuse to discuss.” [Washington Post, 10/15/2001; CBS News, 5/10/2002] After gaining the license, Hanjour apparently returns to the Middle East. He will arrive back in the US in December 2000 (see (Early 2000-November 2000) and December 8, 2000).

Huffman Aviation. [Source: FBI]Huffman Aviation, the Venice, Florida flight school later attended by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi (see July 1-3, 2000) is sold to Naples-based flight school Ambassador Airways, which is owned by Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers. Although Hilliard finances the purchase, Dekkers becomes the sole stockholder. Dekkers is a Dutch national with a highly questionable past. The St. Petersburg Times will later comment, he “seems to have benefited from the same type of casual scrutiny of visa applicants that let the 9/11 hijackers live and train here [in the US].” Even before 9/11, he has “a long history of troubled businesses, run-ins with the Federal Aviation Administration and numerous lawsuits… It is the kind of checkered history, experts say, that should have raised questions both before and after the 9/11 attacks about Dekkers’ fitness to run a school that trained pilots.” Having previously run a computer company in the Netherlands that went bankrupt, he’d moved to Naples, Florida in 1992. After running a computer chip exporting company, he’d started Ambassador Airways. Yet he’d been so late on some of his bills there that at one point the Naples airport refused to sell him aviation fuel, even if he paid cash. At some point in 1999 the FAA revoked his pilot’s license for 45 days—a severe penalty—for several violations, including “operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner.” In spite of Dekkers’ dubious history and the fact that his Ambassador Airways is struggling, Wally Hilliard, a prominent retired businessman, loans him $1.7 million to buy Huffman Aviation. Dekkers says he plans spending $60,000 per year promoting the school, advertising extensively in Germany and other European countries. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 5/29/1999; Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/25/2003; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Huffman Aviation is just up the road from Florida Flight Training Center, where Ziad Jarrah, the alleged pilot of Flight 93, will begin flying lessons in summer 2000 (see (June 28-December 2000)). [Associated Press, 9/9/2002] Dekkers will close Ambassador Airways in December 2001, due to financial difficulties, and sell Huffman Aviation in January 2003. [Naples Daily News, 1/25/2003; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 1/28/2003]

9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi takes flying lessons in Bonn, Germany. He takes a lesson in an ultralight two-seater and then returns ten days later for a second lesson. His former flying teacher will later recall, “The young man was highly attentive and especially talented.” [Agence France-Presse, 10/9/2001] There are reports that Mohamed Atta also takes lessons on ultralight aircraft in the Philippines in 1999 (see April 1999 and December 1999).

One of the ultralights used at the Angeles City Flying Club. [Source: Woodland Park Resort]9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi are seen again in the Philippines, partying and taking flying lessons. They stay at the Woodland Park Resort Hotel about sixty miles north of Manila, as they did in 1997 and earlier in 1999. Gina Marcelo, a waitress at the hotel, will later recall that Marwan Alshehhi threw a party there. “There were about seven people. They rented the open area by the swimming pool… They drank Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey and mineral water. They barbecued shrimp and onions. They came in big vehicles, and they had a lot of money. They all had girlfriends.” [International Herald Tribune, 10/5/2001] 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is also known to be in the Philippines for much of 1999, plotting again to assassinate the Pope (see 1999-September 10, 2001). There are no eyewitness accounts of him being seen with Atta or Alshehhi at this time, but when he lived in the Philippines in 1994 he was known to party and have local girlfriends (see Early 1994-January 1995). Security guard Ferdinand Abad later recalls Mohamed Atta registered under his own name at the hotel this month. Atta went to the nearby Angeles City Flying Club about two of three times a week to train on ultralight aircraft. Abad recalls seeing the flying club van pick up Atta at least five times. Just as when Atta and Alshehhi were at the resort earlier in the year, no one recalls Alshehhi taking flying lessons, only Atta. [Philippine Star, 10/1/2001; Gulf News, 10/2/2001; International Herald Tribune, 10/5/2001] The Philippine military will later confirm that Atta and Alshehhi were at the hotel after finding a number of employees who claim to have seen them. [Philippine Star, 10/1/2001; Gulf News, 10/2/2001] A leader of a militant group connected to al-Qaeda will later confess to helping 9/11 hijacker pilots while they were in this area (see Shortly After October 5, 2005). The 9/11 Commission will not mention the possibility of Atta and Alshehhi staying in the Philippines. They will note that the two of them left Germany in the last week of November 1999 with the intention of going to Afghanistan, but there is no mention of when they arrived in Afghanistan. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 166-167]

Ziad Jarrah in Afghanistan. [Source: Public Domain]9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan Alshehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Nawaf Alhazmi meet to discuss the 9/11 operation at a building known as the “House of Alghamdi” in Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to a statement made by bin al-Shibh in an interview prior to his capture in 2002 (see September 8-11, 2002 and September 11, 2002). Bin al-Shibh will say, “We had a meeting attended by all four pilots including Nawaf Alhazmi, Atta’s right-hand man,” which the Guardian will interpret to mean Alhazmi, and not Hani Hanjour, flew Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon (see (December 2000-January 2001)). [Guardian, 9/9/2002] The 9/11 Commission, based on information obtained from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) under interrogation, will place Hanjour in Afghanistan in spring 2000, indicating he will arrive some months after this meeting is held, and could not therefore attend it. Please note: information from detainee interrogations is thought to be unreliable due to the methods used to extract it (see June 16, 2004). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 226] In a substitution for testimony introduced as evidence at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, KSM will place Hanjour’s arrival at the training camps in Afghanistan in “September or October” of 2000. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 7/31/2006, pp. 23 ]

9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, who is under CIA surveillance at this time, begins sending e-mails to US flight schools, inquiring about their pilot training programs. One e-mail states, “We are a small group (2-3) of young men from different Arab [sic] countries.” “Now we are living in Germany since a while for study purposes. We would like to start training for the career of airline professional pilots. In this field we haven’t yet any knowledge, but we are ready to undergo an intensive training program.” Apparently, multiple e-mails are sent from the same Hotmail account. Some e-mails are signed “M. Atta,” while others are signed “Mahmoud Ben Hamad.” [Chicago Tribune, 2/25/2003] According to the 9/11 Commission, Atta e-mails 31 different US flight schools, and requests details on the cost of training, sources of financing, and accommodation. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 168] On March 23, he e-mails the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma and requests information about their flight training. One recently arrested al-Qaeda operative had trained at this school (see February 23-June 2001), and Zacarias Moussaoui will train there one year later (see February 23-June 2001). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 57 ]

Mohamed Atta, along with others of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, is believed by some to have resided in Punta Gorda, Florida before July 2000 (see Before July 2000), prior to his attending flight school in Venice, about 30 miles north of there (see July 6-December 19, 2000). He is also witnessed in Punta Gorda around July-August 2001 (see Mid-July-Mid-August 2001), well after the time he leaves Venice. Additionally, Atta and some other hijackers are reportedly witnessed at the Charlotte County Airport in Punta Gorda. Cathy Mohr, the owner of a cafe there, later says, “The picture [of Atta] in the paper looked really familiar and people from the airport said, ‘Hey you know they were here.’” [NBC 2 (Fort Myers), 4/24/2002] After seeing photos of them after 9/11, Frank Cvelbar, whose Aero Precision flight school is based at the airport, believes he has seen four of the alleged hijackers “very occasionally” visiting the airport, shopping in his school’s pilot supplies shop, or hanging around the airport’s lobby. Cvelbar will say he is “very sure” about having seen Atta, and “pretty sure” about seeing Marwan Alshehhi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Ahmed Alnami. [Charlotte Sun, 10/3/2001] A salesperson at Eastern Avionics, a vendor at the airport, later recalls Marwan Alshehhi having bought a pilot’s headset from them. After the sale, he starts receiving e-mails, apparently sent by Mohamed Atta (see Before September 11, 2001). After 9/11, the Punta Gorda Police Department will confirm handing over half a dozen pieces of information to the FBI. [Charlotte Sun, 10/2/2001; NBC 2 (Fort Myers), 4/24/2002] Yet according to official accounts, Atta and Alshehhi were only in this area when attending flight school in Venice. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 223-253] When asked to corroborate or refute reports of the hijackers having been in Charlotte County, FBI spokeswoman Sara Oates will only respond, “The FBI has information but the FBI cannot disclose the information because the investigation is pending.” [Charlotte Sun, 10/3/2001]

National Air College in San Diego. [Source: Fox News] (click image to enlarge)Future 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi takes his first flying lesson in the US. In contrast to a lesson elsewhere a short time later, where the instructor describes him as “dumb” (see May 5 and 10, 2000), he does quite well. The lesson is at the National Air College in San Diego, in a four-seater plane with instructor Arnaud Petit. During the hour-long flight, Alhazmi proves to be surprisingly adept, and can almost take off and land on his own. Alhazmi is courteous and acts like a businessman. He wants a license within a month and does not seem fazed when Petit says it will cost $4,000. However, his English is not good enough to start flight training. Petit tells him to improve it and come back in a month, but he never returns. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 271-2; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 517-8] Alhazmi will say that his flight training continues in the winter (see (December 2000-January 2001)).

Fred Sorbi, and the Cessna 172 used by the hijackers. [Source: San Diego Channel 10]9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar arrive at Sorbi’s Flying Club, a small school in San Diego, and announce that they want to learn to fly Boeing airliners. Alhazmi had previously had a lesson at another nearby flying school (see April 4, 2000). [Washington Post, 9/30/2001] They are there with someone named “Hani”—possibly 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour—but only the two of them go up in an airplane. The 9/11 Commission will say that Hanjour is outside the US at this time, although some media reports will place him in San Diego (see (Early 2000-November 2000)). [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/28/2001] Instructor Rick Garza says that the dream to fly big jets is the goal of practically every student who comes to the school, but he notices an unusual lack of any basic understanding of aircraft in these two. When he asks Almihdhar to draw the aircraft, Almihdhar draws the wings on backwards. Both speak English poorly, but Almihdhar in particular seems impossible to communicate with. Rather than following the instructions he was given, he would vaguely reply, “Very good. Very nice.” [Chicago Tribune, 9/30/2001] The two offer extra money to Garza if he will teach them to fly multi-engine Boeing planes, but Garza declines. [Washington Post, 9/30/2001] “I told them they had to learn a lot of other things first… It was like Dumb and Dumber. I mean, they were clueless. It was clear to me they weren’t going to make it as pilots.” [Observer, 10/7/2001Sources:Rick Garza]

Florida Flight Training Center. [Source: FBI]Ziad Jarrah, the alleged pilot of Flight 93, arrives in the US, flying from Munich to Atlanta, Georgia (or Newark, according to the 9/11 Commission). He enters on a tourist visa, issued in Berlin on May 25, 2000. He then flies to Venice, Florida, where he has already arranged to take full-time lessons at the Florida Flight Training Center (FFTC). However, he never files an application to change his status from tourist to student. According to the 9/11 Commission, “This failure to maintain a legal immigration status provided a solid legal basis to deny him entry on each of the six subsequent occasions in which he reentered the United States. But because there was no student tracking system in place and because neither Jarrah nor the school complied with the law’s notification requirements, immigration inspectors could not know he was out of status.” Jarrah begins the private pilot program at FFTC on June 28, aiming to get a multi-engine license. His training will cost $16,000, which his parents wire to him. [Longman, 2002, pp. 90-91; US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 11-12 ] FFTC is just down the road from Huffman Aviation, a flight school where Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi soon begin training. [Associated Press, 9/9/2002]

Future 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah allegedly tries to get his flight school in Florida to help hijacker associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh obtain a US visa. Bin al-Shibh wants to come to the US to train as a pilot, supposedly so he can be the fourth pilot in the 9/11 plot, but he has been having trouble getting a US visa (see May 17, 2000-May 2001). Sometime between June 28 and December 2000, when he is training at the Florida Flight Training Center (FFTC) in Venice, Florida, Jarrah gets to be friends with Arne Kruithof, the owner of the school. Kruithof will later recall that Jarrah “told me that he knew somebody who was also interested in getting a commercial pilot license.… He said his name was Ramzi something.… When I found out that [Ramzi’s] English was poor, we referred him to a language school through which he tried to obtain a visa.… When I asked Ziad why, if he knew, his visa was denied, he said, ‘No, I do not know that.’ We did then make a few phone calls, but nobody could tell us anything.” [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 132] Bin al-Shibh wires the school a $2,200 deposit in August 2000 in anticipation of getting the visa, but he never gets it. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 225]

Ziad Jarrah, with dark blue shirt and sunglasses, leaning against an airplane. He is surrounded by his fellow flight school students. [Source: History Channel]9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah attends the Florida Flight Training Center (FFTC) in Venice, Florida, where he takes lessons in a Cessna 152. According to the FBI, he finishes his training there in December 2000. [Der Spiegel, 2002, pp. 12; US Congress, 9/26/2002] The school’s owner, Arne Kruithof, later says Jarrah is enrolled there until January 15, 2001. [Longman, 2002, pp. 91] The 9/11 Commission says he studies there until January 31, 2001. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 12 ] However, these latter two accounts conflict with other reports, according to which Jarrah is elsewhere at the same time (see Late November 2000-January 30, 2001). According to the 9/11 Commission, in early August, just weeks after commencing training, Jarrah gains a single-engine private pilot certificate. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224] However, Arne Kruithof says that although Jarrah eventually receives his private pilot license and instrument rating, he does not do so while at FFTC. Kruithof later claims that Jarrah becomes an “average” pilot, saying, “We had to do more to get him ready than others. His flight skills seemed to be a little bit out there.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 91] At the same time as Jarrah is in Venice, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi attend Huffman Aviation, which is just up the road from FFTC. [Associated Press, 9/9/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224] Yet no reports describe him ever meeting them while they are so near to each other. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who shared an apartment in Hamburg with Mohamed Atta (see November 1, 1998-February 2001), is supposed to join Jarrah at FFTC, wiring the school a $2,200 deposit in August 2000, but is repeatedly unable to obtain the necessary US visa (see May 17, 2000-May 2001). [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 225]

Sheriff William E. Clement [Source: Charlotte County Sheriff's Office]In the weeks after 9/11, Sheriff William E. Clement will say he believes some of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, resided in the area of Punta Gorda, Florida, and attended a flight school at Charlotte County Airport. Clement will say that some local businesses recognize Atta from pictures shown after 9/11, and say he may have used an alias. According to Clement, “It looks like some of these terrorists were here and then went to Venice.” [Charlotte Sun, 9/21/2001] Along with hijacker Marwan Alshehhi, Atta moves to Venice, about 30 miles north of Punta Gorda, at the beginning of July (see July 1-3, 2000). Yet, according to official accounts, Atta first enters the US on June 3, 2000, and, along with Alshehhi, remains in the New York area until the start of July (see June 2000).

Arne Kruithof. [Source: History Channel]According to some accounts, while he is taking lessons at Florida Flight Training Center (FFTC) in Venice, alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah appears an unlikely terrorist. Arne Kruithof, the school’s owner, later says Jarrah is “not just nice, but he had qualities you look for in a dear friend, someone you trust.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 92] He will tell the 9/11 Commission that Jarrah is “polite and easy to deal with,” and does not show “any hostility to the United States or to the West.” [9/11 Commission, 4/12/2004] Kruithof says Jarrah “would even offer to put out the trash cans at night, which no one else did,” and later remembers him “bringing me a six-pack of beer at home when I hurt my knee one time and sitting for hours on my sofa chatting.” Unlike other Middle Eastern students, Jarrah never seems uncomfortable or disapproving of the school’s receptionists, who wear skimpy skirts and tiny t-shirts. [Corbin, 2003, pp. 155] Furthermore, Jarrah drinks alcohol, having one or two beers, “but not three.” According to Kruithof, who later insists Jarrah’s demeanor was “not faked,” the school’s “entire staff does not believe that he had bad intentions,” and Jarrah “was a friend to all of us.” However, fellow flight student Thorsten Biermann, who rooms with Jarrah for six weeks, describes him as “introverted, a loner, he kept his distance.” Biermann will describe one occasion flying with Jarrah on a round-trip to Fort Lauderdale where, on the return, Jarrah insisted on both flying and manning the radio, and twice ignored Biermann’s pleas to refuel when the weather worsened. Biermann says: “I decided I did not want to fly with him anymore, and everyone I knew who flew with him felt the same way. It was as if he needed control.” Biermann will also say that Jarrah avoids pork and, contrary to what Kruithof claims, does not drink alcohol, even when they go to bars together. [New York Times, 9/23/2001; Los Angeles Times, 10/23/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 91-92]

Rudi Dekkers. [Source: Peter Muhly / Agence France-Presse]9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi move from New York to Venice, Florida. [Chicago Sun-Times, 9/16/2001] They arrive at Huffman Aviation, a flying school at Venice Municipal Airport, on July 1, according to the school’s owner Rudi Dekkers, inquiring about taking lessons there. They are reported to also check out a flight school in Oklahoma at the beginning of this month (see July 2-3, 2000). They then return to Huffman—on July 3 according the Dekkers—and begin flight instruction, subsequently enrolling in the school’s Accelerated Pilot Program. When they register at the school, Atta and Alshehhi use their real names. Dekkers later states that they say they are unhappy with a flying school they attended up north, though he gives no details about the identity of this school. It will later be claimed that Atta and Alshehhi attended a flight school in Punta Gorda before moving to Venice (see Before July 2000). However, Punta Gorda is south, not north, of Venice. Paying by check, Atta will give $18,703.50 in total for his lessons, while Alshehhi gives $20,917.63. The money necessary to cover their training is sent to them in a series of transfers from Dubai (see June 29, 2000-September 18, 2000). [Washington Post, 9/19/2001; Washington Post, 9/30/2001; US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Huffman’s owner Rudi Dekkers has what the St. Petersburg Times will describe as “a long history of troubled businesses, run-ins with the Federal Aviation Administration and numerous lawsuits.” [St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] After 9/11 he will face even more lawsuits (see August 23, 2001-April 2004).

Charles Voss. [Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune]Having arrived in Venice, Florida, to take flying lessons, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi rent a room in the south Venice home of Charles Voss, a bookkeeper at Huffman Aviation, and his wife Drucilla. They arrive in a rental car, but later in the week buy a red 1989 Pontiac, which they register to the Voss’s address. They are found to be unpleasant and messy guests, and after a week are asked to leave. Drucilla Voss later says, “We never talked. They ate all their meals out and really spent all their time in their room.” She describes them as “very sarcastic,” and says, “They gave me the impression they didn’t care much for women.” [Charlotte Sun, 9/13/2001; Charlotte Sun, 9/13/2001; Chicago Sun-Times, 9/16/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/27/2001; Wall Street Journal, 10/16/2001]

Huffman Aviation logo. [Source: Huffman Aviation]9/11 hijackers Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta attend Huffman Aviation, a flight school in Venice, Florida and enroll in its Accelerated Pilot Program, aiming to get commercial pilot licenses. According to the school’s owner Rudi Dekkers, Atta already has a private pilot’s license—though where and how he gained this is unstated—and wants to obtain a commercial license. Alshehhi wants to obtain both licenses. They begin their training in a Cessna 172 with instructor Thierry Leklou. According to the 9/11 Commission, by the end of July both are already taking solo flights. However, in August Leklou complains to Chief Flight Instructor Daniel Pursell that the two are failing to follow instructions and have bad attitudes. Pursell considers expelling them, but, according to Dekkers, after a warning they improve their behavior and continue without further problems. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224, 227; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Yet Pursell later testifies that the school’s instructors breathed “a collective sigh of relief” when the two left Huffman. [Associated Press, 3/23/2006] Furthermore, reportedly, “Atta and al-Shehhi would rent a plane from Huffman and be gone for days at a time, Pursell said. They could fly to 20 airports across the state and never be noticed.” [St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Mark Mikarts, another of the school’s instructors, says Atta has “big problems with authority,” and doesn’t take instructions well. [Wall Street Journal, 9/17/2001; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Susan Hall, Huffman’s office manager, refers to Atta as “the little terrorist” while he is at the school, because, she later says, “I just didn’t like the aura he gave off.” [Reuters, 3/22/2006] In the middle of their training, in late September, Atta and Alshehhi enroll at another flight school, in nearby Sarasota. However, they are soon asked to leave it, and return to Huffman in October (see Late September-Early October 2000). While Atta and Alshehhi attend Huffman Aviation, another of the alleged hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, is taking lessons at a flight school just down the road from them (see (June 28-December 2000)). Yet no reports describe the three ever meeting up while they are all in Venice. According to official accounts, Atta and Alshehhi complete their schooling at Huffman on December 19, 2000, when they take their commercial pilot license tests. Rudi Dekkers says that after returning to the school to settle their bills, they leave and are never seen there again. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Yet Daniel Pursell will later allege that early in 2001 the two are still connected with Huffman, being reported to the school for practicing nighttime landings in one of its planes at another Florida airport (see Between January and February 2001).

Marwan Alshehhi. [Source: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division]At Huffman Aviation flying school, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi pass various pilots’ tests. On August 14, 2000, according to the 9/11 Commission, they pass their private pilot airplane tests, with Atta scoring 97 out of 100 and Alshehhi scoring 83. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 12 ] However, Huffman’s owner Rudi Dekkers will later testify before Congress that Atta already had a private pilot’s license when he first arrived at the school, six weeks previously (see July 1-3, 2000). [US Congress, 3/19/2002] Despite having failed their Stage I exam for instruments rating at nearby Jones Aviation a month earlier (see Late September-Early October 2000), on November 6 Atta and Alshehhi pass their instrument rating airplane tests at Huffman, scoring 90 and 75 respectively. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 15 ] On December 19 they pass their commercial pilot license tests, thus completing their training, with Atta scoring 93 and Alshehhi scoring 73. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] (According to a 2005 Federal Aviation Administration factsheet, the passing score for all the pilot tests Atta and Alshehhi take is 70. Presumably this is also the case in 2000. [Administration, 3/2005 ] ) Yet one fellow student who witnesses the pair at Huffman on an almost daily basis later states that, while he always accompanied Atta during his flying lessons, she never saw Alshehhi at the controls of the training aircraft. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/18/2001] Rudi Dekkers will state, “I have heard from the instructors that they were average students, the examiner told me the same.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/21/2001] The local FAA designated examiner Dave Whitman is responsible for testing Atta and Alshehhi. He issues them temporary 120-day licenses allowing them to fly small, twin-engine planes. He will later say he assumes the FAA made their licenses permanent, as he was not notified otherwise. He says, “I don’t even remember them, specifically. They were foreign students, and foreign students often tend to keep to themselves.” [USA Today, 9/13/2001; Chicago Sun-Times, 9/16/2001; US Congress, 3/19/2002]

Writing in 2004, veteran British intelligence officer Colonel John Hughes-Wilson will note that, at the same time as hijacker pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi are learning to fly at Huffmann Aviation in Venice, Florida (see July 6-December 19, 2000), “A CIA front company called Air Caribe was also operating out of the very same hangar at Venice airport.” He will go on to comment that “this highly curious coincidence must inevitably raise some suspicions of just how much the CIA really did know before 9/11. Was the CIA trying to infiltrate and ‘double’ the US-based al-Qaeda cell, in the hope of using it against Osama bin Laden’s organization in the future?” [Hughes-Wilson, 2004, pp. 391] The Air Caribe story is originally broken by investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, who will publish a book about Atta’s time in Florida in 2004 (see March 2004).

A close associate of future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in San Diego helps Alhazmi contact a flight school in Florida. An unnamed FBI team leader of the 9/11 investigation will later be interviewed by the 9/11 Commission. This FBI agent will say that Mohdar Abdullah knew that both Alhazmi and Almihdhar were interested in learning to fly. At one point, Abdullah calls an unnamed flight school in Florida for Alhazmi. Alhazmi presumably needs help because his English isn’t very good. Abdullah is about to use the phone inside the Texaco gas station where he and Alhazmi work (see Autumn 2000), but Alhazmi asks him to call from outside, so he uses a pay phone next to the station. This FBI agent will also say that he doubts Abdullah was a witting part of the 9/11 plot, but he believes that if anyone in San Diego had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, it would be Abdullah. Abdullah helped the two hijackers with many tasks in San Diego, and he may have known in early 2000 that they were planning to crash a plane into a building (see Early 2000). [9/11 Commission, 11/18/2003] It will not be mentioned when this incident takes place, but the autumn of 2000 is likely, since this is when Alhazmi and Abdullah both work at the gas station (see Autumn 2000). Hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, and Ziad Jarrah are attending flying school in Florida at the time (see July 6-December 19, 2000 and (June 28-December 2000)).

Jones Aviation [Source: Jones Aviation] (click image to enlarge)Having attended Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Florida since early July, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi move to Jones Aviation in Sarasota, about 20 miles north of Venice, to continue their training. However, their instructor finds them rude and aggressive, and claims they sometimes fight with him to take over the controls of the training plane. The instructor later says that when he talks to Atta, “he could not look you in the eye. His attention span was very short.… [T]hey didn’t live up to our standards.” Atta and Alshehhi each complete about 20 hours of flying time in single-engine planes, but early in October fail their Stage I exam for instruments rating. Gary Jones, the vice president of the school, later states, “We told them we wouldn’t teach them anymore. We told them, one, they couldn’t speak English and, two, they had bad attitudes. They wouldn’t listen to what the instructors had to instruct.” The two then return to Huffman Aviation to continue their training. [Chicago Tribune, 9/16/2001; Washington Post, 9/19/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 224]

Anne Greaves. [Source: History Channel]While they attend Huffman Aviation flying school in Venice, Florida, future 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi use the same training airplane as Anne Greaves, a 56-year-old Briton. Greaves will later say she sees Atta and Alshehhi on an almost daily basis over roughly six weeks. Mohamed Atta Seen as Saudi Prince - Greaves will say that she finds it odd to find two Arabs in the quiet, retirement town of Venice, so she asks her flight instructor about them one day, and is told Atta is Saudi royalty and Alshehhi is his bodyguard. She will recall: “I remember thinking at the time I found this very strange because normally royalty learn at military establishments for security reasons alone. And also royalty I remember remarking usually had manners and I felt these these two certainly didn’t have any manners.” Asked if others at Huffman Aviation also thought Atta was some kind of prince, Greaves will comment, “It was my impression that was generally believed because it was my instructor who told me this at the time so I had the impression that that was generally believed, yes.” Whereas Alshehhi dresses casually, Greaves sees Atta “always very formally dressed… always neatly pressed trousers of a wool type. A shirt and a waistcoat to match the trousers.” This is in spite of the “extremely hot” weather. [Associated Press, 9/24/2001; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/18/2001] Yet Rudi Dekkers, the school’s owner, will later claim the two only said they were cousins from Germany. [USA Today, 9/13/2001] (Atta and Alshehhi are in fact unrelated.) [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 160-162]Atta Given Preference - Greaves will recall, “I was really a little bit jealous in that they were always given preference with one of the Warriors which was a much newer, much neater aircraft.” She will also comment that for Atta “to have progressed as rapidly as he seemed to have done at Huffman he must have had flying skills before he came to Huffman Aviation.” (This fits with claims made by Rudi Dekkers, that Atta already had a private pilot’s license when he first arrived at the school (see July 6-December 19, 2000).) Alshehhi Never Practices Flying - However, though the pair always flies together, she says: “I never saw Alshehhi take the controls of the aircraft. It was always Mohamed Atta.” [Associated Press, 9/24/2001; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/18/2001; US Congress, 3/19/2002]Excited about the Cole Bombing? - The only time Greaves sees Atta and Alshehhi show any enthusiasm is around the “middle end of October” or “possibly early in November,” when they have been busy on the Internet in the school’s computer room. She sees them “hugging each other with joy and almost dancing in the room.” Several reports will later speculate that this celebrating is in response to the al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen (see October 12, 2000), though Greaves will be unsure. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/18/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001; PBS, 1/17/2002]Greaves Suspects They Are Drug Smugglers - Greaves will later say: “I couldn’t help but be suspicious as to why [Atta] was there [at Huffman]. There was no love of flying in him.” She says Atta never shows any emotion and appears hypnotized. Although she never considers terrorism, she thinks there is “an ulterior motive, maybe drug smuggling.” After the 9/11 attacks, due to her suspicion of the pair, Greaves will contact the FBI with her concerns before the names of the suspected hijackers are made public. [BBC, 9/24/2001; Associated Press, 9/24/2001; Daily Telegraph, 9/25/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001; Guardian, 7/5/2002]

Zacarias Moussaoui and two of the 9/11 hijackers purchase flight training equipment from Sporty’s Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio. November 5, 2000: Mohamed Atta purchases flight deck videos for a Boeing 747-200 and a Boeing 757-200, as well as other items; December 11, 2000: Atta purchases flight deck videos for a Boeing 767-300ER and an Airbus A320-200; March 19, 2001: Nawaf Alhazmi purchases flight deck videos for a Boeing 747-400, a Boeing 747-200, and a Boeing 777-200, as well as another video. Alhazmi also purchases maps around this time from another shop (see March 23, 2001); June 20, 2001: Zacarias Moussaoui purchases flight deck videos for a Boeing 747-400 and a Boeing 747-200. [Sporty's, 6/20/2001; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 12/11/2001 ] However, it is not clear whether Moussaoui was to take part in 9/11 or some other operation (see January 30, 2003).

9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi tells two associates, Mohdar Abdullah and FBI informant Abdussattar Shaikh, that he has re-entered flight training, but it is unclear if this is true. He calls Abdullah twice in December 2000/January 2001, initially saying that he is in San Francisco and will have flight training there, but he later says that he has moved to Arizona and both he and hijacker Hani Hanjour are in flight training. He also calls Shaikh to say that he and Hanjour are to have flight training in Arizona. Alhazmi lived with Shaikh for several months, but moved out in the middle of December (see May 10-Mid-December 2000 and December 12, 2000-March 2001). [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 276; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 223] Hanjour is known to undergo flight training in Arizona at this time (see January-February 2001 and February 8-March 12, 2001). There is no known public record of Alhazmi training to be a pilot at this time, although there is other evidence Alhazmi trained to be a pilot (see November 25, 2007).

9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, while learning to fly in Florida, stall a small plane on a Miami International Airport runway. Unable to start the plane, they simply walk away. Flight controllers have to guide the waiting passenger airliners around the stalled aircraft until it is towed away 35 minutes later. They weren’t supposed to be using that airport in the first place. The FAA threatens to investigate the two students and the flight school they are attending. The flight school sends records to the FAA, but no more is heard of the investigation. [New York Times, 10/17/2001] “Students do stupid things during their flight course, but this is quite stupid,” says the owner of the flight school. Nothing was wrong with the plane. [CNN, 10/17/2001]

The Pan Am Boeing 767 flight simulator used by the hijackers. [Source: FBI]Having finished their flight training at Huffman Aviation and passed their commercial pilot license tests (see August 14-December 19, 2000), future 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi spend December 29 and 30 at the SimCenter flight school at Opa-Locka Airport, near Miami. Saying they want to join an Egyptian airline and need experience in a large plane, they each pay $1,500 in cash and spend six hours, split over the two days, training in the school’s Boeing 727 simulator. Henry George, the school’s owner who trains them, will later describe their training as a “mini, mini introduction,” and say they spend most of their time practicing maneuvers and turns. George will describe Atta and Alshehhi as “average pilots,” and say they are “quite ordinary. They were respectful and quiet almost to the point of being shy.” [New York Times, 9/15/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/27/2001; Aviation International News, 11/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001] The FBI will claim that Atta and Alshehhi spend December 31 at Pan Am International, also in Opa-Locka, training on a Boeing 767 simulator there. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui, a/k/a Shaqil, a/k/a Abu Khalid al Sahrawi, Defendant, 3/7/2006] Yet no other reports, including the 9/11 Commission Report, will mention this. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel will specifically claim the alleged hijackers “never approached Pan Am,” although it will not say how it arrived at this conclusion. It will point out that, in contrast to the 767s Atta and Alshehhi allegedly pilot on 9/11, the 727 the two men train to fly at the SimCenter “is a rather old three-engine jet with an old-fashioned cockpit, including a cramped instrument panel loaded down with small dials, knobs, and gauges.… But the 767 and 757 have highly sophisticated ‘glass cockpits,’ featuring video screens and digital readouts, and requiring an advanced level of computer skills.” Furthermore, according to Steven Wallach, an aviation consultant and former airline captain, if the hijackers “took the controls at high altitude and a long distance from their targets, then they likely had considerable training in a 767 or 757. They would have had to descend and navigate to Washington and New York. They would have had to know how to operate the autopilot, as well as other intricate functions.” However, “if the hijackers took over the controls at the last moment, that would indicate a minimum of 767-757 training.” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/22/2001] SimCenter owner Henry George will claim: “I suppose Atta had just enough training to keep the plane in the air—how to make turns and move it up and down. He could not, however, have taxied a 757 or 767 from the gate, got it airborne, or landed it safely.” [Daily Telegraph, 9/14/2001]

Future 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, and Waleed Alshehri are seen flying small aircraft at an airport in Oklahoma, and Zacarias Moussaoui is there at the same time. This is according to a 2002 FBI document about the 9/11 attacks. The document notes that “several employees” at Million Air, located at Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma, see Atta, Alshehhi, and Alshehri on the same Beechcraft Duchess aircraft at the same time. Furthermore, Moussaoui is seen there in the same timeframe, although the FBI report will not mention if Moussaoui is ever seen with the other three. The employees cannot give exact dates when these people are seen, but all the visits are in the six months leading up to 9/11 and two visits are said to take place after August 4, 2001. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002]Other Local Connections - Moussaoui takes flying lessons in Norman, Oklahoma, which is about 30 miles away from Bethany, from February to June 2001. Apparently he stays there most of the time until early August (see February 23-June 2001). Atta and Alshehhi visited the flight school in Norman in July 2000 (see July 2-3, 2000). A motel owner will later claim that around August 1, 2001, he saw Moussaoui, Atta, and Alshehhi together at his motel. The location of the motel is not specified, except that it is about 28 miles from Norman and off Highway 40, which runs about five miles south of Bethany (see August 1, 2001). [LA Weekly, 8/2/2002]Why No Mention in Moussaoui Trial? - Several years after 9/11, US officials will charge Moussaoui with a role in the 9/11 attacks. Strangely, these sightings in Oklahoma will never be mentioned in the trial, even though almost no evidence is put forward in the trial physically linking Moussaoui to any of the 9/11 hijackers in the US (see May 3, 2006).

Clearwater Airpark. [Source: Douglas R. Clifford / St. Petersburg Times]9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi reportedly spend at least 30 minutes practicing landing a single-engine plane at Clearwater Airpark, Florida, after it has closed for the night. This is according to Daniel Pursell, the chief instructor at Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school attended by the two during the latter half of 2000 (see July 6-December 19, 2000). What they are doing at Clearwater is unknown. Their activities draw the attention of a police aide acting as a night watchman, who leaves a voice message at Huffman complaining about the incident. The plane is subsequently identified as having been rented by Atta and Alshehhi. Pursell, along with fellow instructor Thierry Leklou, reprimands them when they return to Venice the following morning. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the two leave Huffman shortly afterwards. This incident first surfaces publicly in 2006, when Pursell testifies at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. However, others will dispute his allegations. Local police say no incident reports were filed describing the event, and neither the FAA nor city have any record of unauthorized landings during this period. According to Bill Morris, Clearwater’s marine and aviation director, a police aide would have called for backup and recorded the plane’s details in a log, rather than calling Huffman. He says even if the aide had wanted to contact the plane’s owner, it would have been impossible to ascertain who this was at night, as allegedly occurred, because the FAA’s offices would have been closed. [CNN, 3/23/2006; St. Petersburg Times, 3/30/2006; Clearwater Citizen, 4/6/2006] Furthermore, Atta and Alshehhi supposedly finished training at Huffman Aviation in December 2000, and the school’s owner Rudi Dekkers will claim Huffman last heard from them around the end of that month. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] However, a similar incident to this is known to have occurred previously, where Atta and Alshehhi abandoned one of Huffman’s planes at Miami International Airport (see December 26, 2000). [CNN, 3/23/2006] And according to the 9/11 Commission, after passing their instrument rating airplane tests on November 6, 2000, the pair was “able to sign out planes. They did so on a number of occasions, often returning at 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. after logging four or five hours of flying time.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 15 ] The St. Petersburg Times reports that Atta and Alshehhi “would rent a plane from Huffman and be gone for days at a time, Pursell said. They could fly to 20 airports across the state and never be noticed.” [St. Petersburg Times, 3/30/2006]

Hani Hanjour, from a 2000 US visa application.
[Source: 9/11 Commission]In January 2001, the Arizona flight school JetTech alerts the FAA about hijacker Hani Hanjour. No one at the school suspects Hanjour of terrorist intent, but they tell the FAA he lacks both the English and flying skills necessary for the commercial pilot’s license he has already obtained. For instance, he had taken classes at the University of Arizona but failed his English classes with a 0.26 grade point average. A JetTech flight school manager “couldn’t believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had.” A former employee says, “I’m still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all.” They also note he is an exceptionally poor student who does not seem to care about passing his courses. [New York Times, 5/4/2002; CBS News, 5/10/2002] An FAA official named John Anthony actually sits next to Hanjour in class and observes his skills. He suggests the use of a translator to help Hanjour pass, but the flight school points out that goes “against the rules that require a pilot to be able to write and speak English fluently before they even get their license.” [Associated Press, 5/10/2002] The FAA verifies that Hanjour’s 1999 pilot’s license is legitimate (see April 15, 1999), but takes no other action. However, his license should have been rejected because it had already expired in late 1999 when he failed to take a manadatory medical test. [Associated Press, 9/15/2001; CBS News, 5/10/2002] An Arizona FAA inspector later says, “There should have been a stop right then and there.” He will claim that federal law would have required Hanjour to be re-examined. [Associated Press, 6/13/2002] In February, Hanjour begins advanced simulator training, “a far more complicated task than he had faced in earning a commercial license.” [New York Times, 6/19/2002] The flight school again alerts the FAA about this and gives a total of five alerts about Hanjour, but no further action on him is taken. The FBI is not told about Hanjour. [CBS News, 5/10/2002] Ironically, in July 2001, Arizona FBI agent Ken Williams will recommend in a memo that the FBI liaison with local flight schools and keep track of suspicious activity by Middle Eastern students (see July 10, 2001).

According to the FBI and 9/11 Commission, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi move temporarily to Georgia on January 25, 2001, staying briefly in Norcross and Decatur, near Atlanta. The FBI will later say the hijackers remain in the Atlanta area during February and March. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 229] According to several news reports, between late February and early March, Atta and Alshehhi twice visit the Advanced Aviation Flight Training School in nearby Lawrenceville. They pay $171 in total and on both occasions rent a small Piper Warrior plane for an hour. They are accompanied by an instructor on the first occasion, but fly alone the second time. According to the school’s owner Bruce Buell, the two are “well-dressed, polite and friendly.” Two days after 9/11 Chrissy Ross, a flight dispatcher at the school, will recognize Atta’s name when the identities of the suspected hijackers are made public. She calls the FBI, whose agents then come and take all the school’s records. [CNN, 9/26/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001] However, the FBI claims Atta and Alshehhi visit Advanced Aviation about a month earlier than news reports suggest, on January 31 and February 6. [US Congress, 9/26/2002]

9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour practices on a Boeing 737-200 simulator for a total of 21 hours at the JetTech International flight school in Phoenix, Arizona. Hanjour also attends ground school and pays just under $7,500 for the training. Despite only completing 21 of his originally scheduled 34 hours of simulator training, according to the FBI this is the best-trained of the four hijacker pilots (see Spring-Summer 2001). However, an instructor comments: “Student made numerous errors during performance… including a lack of understanding of some basic concepts… Some of the concepts involved in large jet systems cannot be fully comprehended by someone with only small prop plane experience.” [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia; Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 ] The school contacts the FAA to warn it of Hanjour’s poor English and flying skills (see January-February 2001).

Rudi Dekkers, who owns the Venice, Florida flight school attended by 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, sets up his own commuter airline called Florida Air (FLAIR), which flies out of Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. FLAIR, which also goes by the name Sunrise Airlines, will only be in service for a couple of months in 2001, and eventually has its operating authority revoked by the Department of Transportation. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 3/3/2001; Transportation, 2/14/2002, pp. 6963 ; Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/25/2003; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Yet, at the same time as he is establishing FLAIR, Dekkers fails to pay his rent for Huffman Aviation flight school on time six months in a row, from February to July 2001, blaming this partly on tight cash flow. [Charlotte Sun, 9/13/2001] According to the 9/11 Commission, at some point in their flight training Rudi Dekkers offers Atta and Alshehhi jobs as co-pilots for FLAIR. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 38 ] Yet they are supposed to have completed training at Huffman Aviation two months earlier, in December 2000, after which Dekkers claims he never saw them again. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 227; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Considering he reportedly offers him a job with his airline, it seems odd that Dekkers later claims having much disliked Atta when he was at Huffman. He will say he thought Atta was “very arrogant,” and that “My personal feeling was Atta was an asshole first class… I just didn’t like the guy… Sometimes you have that impression from when you meet people in the field and that was my first impression.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/21/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001]

According to a book by Jurgen Roth, described by Newsday as “one of Germany’s top investigative reporters,” on this day 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta applies for a job with Lufthansa Airlines at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport. The security post he applies for would give him access to secure areas of the busy international airport. However, when Lufthansa checks his criminal record they find that in 1995 he had been under investigation for petty drug crimes (see 1995), so his application is turned down. Three days later, an Iranian citizen dropping Atta’s name also applies for the same job, and is also turned down. On March 5, a third man applies, with Atta at his side. He tells Lufthansa that he has been a pilot in the Pakistani Air Force. Apparently both the Iranian and Pakistani are members of an Islamic study group with Atta at the Hamburg university they are all attending. While the name of the Pakistani pilot is not revealed in this account, a Pakistani Air Force pilot named Atif bin Mansour is known to have applied together with Atta for a room for a new Islamic study group in early 1999 (see Late 1998-August 10, 1999). After 9/11, Lufthansa Airlines will say they can neither confirm nor deny this account, because all such records for rejected applicants have been routinely deleted. [Roth, 2001, pp. 9f; Newsday, 1/24/2002] In 2007, it will be reported that French intelligence learned before 9/11 of a meeting in early 2000 in which al-Qaeda planned the hijacking of an airliner departing from Frankfurt, and one of the target airliners considered was Lufthansa (see Early 2000).

Ziad Jarrah standing next to a Cessna in Florida. [Source: National Geographic]9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah is said to obtain a commercial pilot’s license around this time by flight school owner Arne Kruithof, although neither the FBI nor any other official body will confirm this. Jarrah obtained a private pilot’s license from Florida Flight Training Center (FFTC) (see (June 28-December 2000)) in 2000 and then spent a few hours on Boeing simulators later in 2000 (see December 15, 2000-January 8, 2001). FFTC owner Kruithof will later say that he was told Jarrah obtained a commercial license: “He was supposed to come back and finish his commercial pilot license, but he did not. Later, I found out that he did it somewhere else.” However, there is no mention of where he may have obtained such additional training. [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 133]

According to an associate of the 9/11 hijackers, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and flight school owner Rudi Dekkers, the hijackers have more training on large jets than the FBI will disclose. The FBI will say that the four hijacker pilots never fly real large jets before 9/11 and have a total of approximately 17 sessions on large aircraft simulators, mostly on older models: Both Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi each take two sessions lasting 90 minutes on a Boeing 727 simulator and one session on a simulator for a Boeing 767, the type of aircraft they fly on 9/11 (see December 29-31, 2000); Ziad Jarrah, who flies a Boeing 757 on 9/11, has five sessions on 727s and 737s (see December 15, 2000-January 8, 2001); Hani Hanjour, who flies a Boeing 757 on 9/11, practices for a total of 21 hours on a Boeing 737-200 simulator (see February 8-March 12, 2001). When he learns what the FBI believes is the extent of the hijackers’ training, bin al-Shibh will complain in a fax sent to a reporter after 9/11: “How do aviation experts evaluate the skill with which the aircraft were flown, especially the Pentagon attack—accurate and professional as it was? Is it credible that the executers had never before flown a Boeing? Is it credible they only had some lessons on small twin-engine aircrafts and some lessons on simulators?” Referring to the period in early 2001 after the pilots spend a few hours practicing on simulators, bin al-Shibh will say, “What they needed was more flying hours, more training on simulators of large commercial planes such as Boeing 747s and Boeing 767s, as well as studying security precautions in all airports.” However, apparently bin al-Shibh does not mention exactly when or where such additional training took place, if in fact it did. [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 24-6, 38, 134] Interviewed two days after 9/11, Dekkers, at whose flight school Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi initially trained (see July 6-December 19, 2000), will comment, “After the training they had here they went to another flight school in Pompano Beach and they had jet training there, simulator or big planes, but there is where they conducted the training to do what they had to do.” Dekkers will say that he has heard this “from several directions.” However, the Pompano Beach school is not named. [Dekkers, 9/13/2001]

Two Middle Eastern men believed to be 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi land a small plane at Martin Campbell Air Field, near the small town of Copperhill, Tennessee. Danny Whitener, a salvage-car dealer, is tending his plane at the time. The pilot, who calls himself “Mo,” speaks to Whitener for about 15 minutes, aggressively questioning him about a nearby chemical plant and what chemicals are kept there, about a nearby dam, and about two nearby nuclear power plants. According to Whitener, the pilot, who after 9/11 he is convinced was Mohamed Atta, tells him their plane is rented, and that they have flown from Lawrenceville, Georgia, which is about 60 miles south of Copperhill. This would concur with reports of Atta and Alshehhi twice renting a Piper Warrior plane from a Lawrenceville flight school around this time (see (January 25-Early March, 2001)). However, Whitener says their plane on this occasion is a Cessna, which has a very different design to a Warrior. About a month later, according to the airport’s manager John Rutkosky, a man resembling Atta again arrives, this time in an expensive-looking sports car, and inquires about buying a plane. [Associated Press, 10/19/2001; WBIR (Knoxville), 10/19/2001; Dawn (Karachi), 11/25/2001; Washington Post, 12/16/2001]

A crop duster at South Florida Crop Care. [Source: Colin Braley / Reuters]In March and August 2001, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta visits a small airport in South Florida and asks detailed questions about how to start and fly a crop-duster plane. People there easily recall him because he was so persistent. After explaining his abilities, Atta is told he is not skilled enough to fly a crop-duster. [Miami Herald, 9/24/2001] Employees at South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade, Florida, later tell the FBI that Atta was among the men who in groups of two or three visited the crop dusting firm nearly every weekend for six or eight weeks before the attacks. Employee James Lester says, “I recognized him because he stayed on my feet all the time. I just about had to push him away from me.” [Associated Press, 9/15/2001] Yet, according to US investigators, Atta and the other hijackers gave up on the crop-duster idea back around May 2000.

Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi possibly enters and photographs the cockpit of an American Airlines Boeing 757 during a flight from Boston to Los Angeles. This is according to a flight attendant working in first class, whose account is mentioned in a 2002 FBI document about the 9/11 attacks. She will claim that Alshehhi approaches her while boarding, tells her he has recently received his pilot’s license, and asks to see the cockpit. Later in the flight, he meets and speaks with the pilot, and possibly photographs the cockpit. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002]

According to the 9/11 Commission, soon after settling in the area (see March 2001-September 1, 2001), 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour starts receiving “ground instruction” at Air Fleet Training Systems, a flight school in Teterboro, New Jersey. While there, he flies the Hudson Corridor: “a low-altitude ‘hallway’ along the Hudson River that passes New York landmarks like the World Trade Center.” His instructor refuses a second request to fly the Corridor, “because of what he considered Hanjour’s poor piloting skills.” Soon after, Hanjour switches to Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey, about 25 miles from lower Manhattan, from where he rents small aircraft several times during June and July. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 242] In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Caldwell’s owner will confirm that several suspects sought by the FBI, reportedly including hijacker Mohamed Atta, had rented planes from him, though when they did so is unstated. A search of the Lexis Nexus database indicates there are no media accounts of any witnesses recalling Hanjour or any of the other hijackers attending these schools. [New Jersey Star-Ledger, 9/24/2001; Evening Standard, 9/25/2001]

According to a later article by the Boston Globe, during various cross-country test run flights in the summer of 2001, “Some of the hijackers were seen videotaping crews on their flights. Other times, they asked for cockpit tours. Two also rode in the cockpit of the planes of one national airline, said a pilot who requested anonymity. The practice, known as ‘jumpseating,’ allows certified airline pilots to use a spare seat in the cockpit when none is available in the passenger cabin. Airlines reciprocate to help pilots get home or to the city of their originating flight.” [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] Abdulaziz Alomari fails in an effort to sit in a jumpseat in August 2001 (see August 1, 2001).

Hani Hanjour. [Source: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division]While most evidence places future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour on the East Coast in the summer of 2001, Hanjour may undergo some flight training in Phoenix, Arizona, as well. Hanjour trained at the Sawyer School of Aviation previously (see 1998), and there is some evidence he returns there. One school document records Hanjour’s name for use of a flight simulator on June 23, 2001, though his name does not appear on payment records. Faisal al-Salmi, Rayed Abdullah, and Lotfi Raissi also use the flight simulator this day. Al-Salmi will later be convicted of lying about his associations with Hanjour (see February 15, 2002). Abdullah had moved with Hanjour from Florida in 1997, and is known for giving extremist speeches at a Phoenix mosque (see October 1996-Late April 1999). Raissi will later be suspected of involvement in the 9/11 plot, then cleared (see September 21, 2001). There are also indications that Hanjour signs up to use a flight simulator in August with three other Muslim men, including al-Salmi. One Sawyer employee is fairly certain she sees Hanjour during the summer. Another witness sees Hanjour with al-Salmi elsewhere in Phoenix. The 9/11 Commission will note that the evidence of Hanjour training in Phoenix during the summer is not definitive, but “the FBI’s Phoenix office believes it is plausible that Hanjour return[s] to Arizona for additional training.” [New York Times, 5/24/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 529] On July 10, 2001, Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memorandum to FBI headquarters urging a nationwide check on Middle Eastern students at flight schools (see July 10, 2001), but apparently neither Williams nor anyone else actually conducts any kind of check on Phoenix flight schools at this time (see July 10-September 11, 2001).

Hortman Aviation. [Source: Hortman Aviation Services Inc.]9/11 hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah has two sessions of training at a flight school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but is denied a request to rent a plane from there due to his inadequate piloting skills. Jarrah arrived in Philadelphia on June 2 (see June 2-5, 2001). The following day, he arrives at Hortman Aviation, a flight school at the Northeast Philadelphia Airport, and asks to rent a Piper Cherokee aircraft from there. [9/11 Commission, 4/27/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 242; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 54 ] He indicates that he has 225 hours of flying time, and says he has a private pilot’s license but is working on his commercial license. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 3/20/2002, pp. 50-51]Jarrah Wants to Fly the Hudson Corridor - Jarrah tells Herbert Hortman, the owner and operator of Hortman Aviation, that he is “in town for a couple of days” and that he is interested in flying along the Hudson Corridor. [9/11 Commission, 4/27/2004 ] The Hudson Corridor is a “hallway” along the Hudson River where a pilot can fly at low altitude without having to fly on radar. It passes New York landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center, but heavy air traffic makes it a dangerous route for an inexperienced pilot to fly. Hortman will later reflect that, in hindsight, he finds it “highly unusual” for someone from Florida, like Jarrah, to know of the Hudson Corridor. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 3/20/2002, pp. 51; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 242]Instructor Finds Jarrah Has Poor Landing Skills - Hortman assigns David Powell, an instructor at the flight school, to take Jarrah on a “check out” flight, to determine his piloting skills. Accompanied by Powell, Jarrah flies across the Delaware River to New Jersey and lands at the Flying W Airport in Lumberton. During the flight, Jarrah tells Powell that he is from Germany and that he learned to fly in Florida. Although Jarrah is able to complete the flight, he is deemed to be unsatisfactory in his ability to land the aircraft: He lands the Piper Cherokee, which has fixed, un-retractable landing gear, on the nose gear, rather than using the proper technique of landing it on its main gear. Powell tells him he will have to return the following day for a second check out flight. Jarrah Has Second 'Check Out' Flight, but Instructor Still Unhappy - Jarrah returns to the flight school on June 4 and takes the second check out flight. Although he handles the plane more effectively this time, Powell notes that on this occasion there is minimal wind, and so Jarrah’s landings are unaffected by the wind. Powell also finds that Jarrah has difficulty using the plane’s radio and contacting the control tower at the Northeast Philadelphia Airport. He does not recommend that Jarrah be allowed to rent an aircraft from Hortman Aviation. Herbert Hortman tells Jarrah he will need to return to the flight school for another day of instruction before he will be allowed to rent and fly an aircraft from there. Jarrah schedules a third lesson and check out flight, but never returns to Hortman Aviation. Although Jarrah has an FAA pilot’s license that was issued in Florida, Hortman is surprised he has qualified for this, considering his limited flying skills, and speculates that the license was issued by a less than reputable flying school. [9/11 Commission, 4/12/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 4/27/2004 ]Jarrah Accompanied by Unidentified Older Man - On at least one occasion when Jarrah attends Hortman Aviation, he is accompanied by another man, who he introduces as his “uncle.” The man is also Middle Eastern, but has a darker complexion than Jarrah. Hortman will later describe him as being of average height and in his mid to late 40s. He is “appropriately dressed” and does not appear to be a recent immigrant to the United States. Hortman is unable to tell whether the man understands English, as Jarrah does all the talking. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 3/20/2002, pp. 51; 9/11 Commission, 4/27/2004 ] Like Jarrah, Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker pilot of Flight 77 on 9/11, requests flights along the Hudson Corridor around this time, at a flight school in New Jersey (see (April-July 2001)). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 242]

Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi possibly enters an airline cockpit using an alias. According to a 2002 FBI document about the 9/11 attacks, a person matching Alshehhi’s photograph but using the name Matthew Cohen boards an American Airlines Boeing 767 flight from New York City to San Francisco. This person asks for and gets a tour of the cockpit just before the flight takes off. He talks to the pilot and asks questions, such as how high and fast the plane can fly, and how much fuel it can hold. The pilot will later recognize Alshehhi from a news photograph. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002] Another of the 9/11 hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, flies from Baltimore to Los Angeles on this same day, and then drives to Las Vegas, so perhaps Alshehhi is meeting other hijackers in Las Vegas (see June 7-10, 2001).

FBI agent Ken Williams. [Source: FBI]Phoenix, Arizona, FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Arizona. The memo is titled: “Zakaria Mustapha Soubra; IT-OTHER (Islamic Army of the Caucasus),” because it focuses on Zakaria Soubra, a Lebanese flight student in Prescott, Arizona, and his connection with a terror group in Chechnya that has ties to al-Qaeda. It is subtitled: “Osama bin Laden and Al-Muhjiroun supporters attending civil aviation universities/colleges in Arizona.” [Fortune, 5/22/2002; Arizona Republic, 7/24/2003] Williams’ memo is based on an investigation of Sorba that Williams had begun in 2000 (see April 2000), but he had trouble pursuing because of the low priority the Arizona FBI office gave terror investigations (see April 2000-June 2001). Additionally, Williams had been alerted to suspicions about radical militants and aircraft at least three other times (see October 1996; 1998; November 1999-August 2001). In the memo, Williams does the following: Names nine other suspect students from Pakistan, India, Kenya, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002] Hijacker Hani Hanjour, attending flight school in Arizona in early 2001 and probably continuing into the summer of 2001 (see Summer 2001), is not one of the students, but, as explained below, it seems two of the students know him. [US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 ; Washington Post, 7/25/2003] Notes that he interviewed some of these students, and heard some of them make hostile comments about the US. Additionally, he noticed that they were suspiciously well informed about security measures at US airports. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002] Notes an increasing, “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” taking flight lessons in Arizona. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002; US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 ] Suspects that some of the ten people he has investigated are connected to al-Qaeda. [US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 ] One person on the list, Ghassan al Sharbi, will be arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 with al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). Al Sharbi attended a flight school in Prescott, Arizona. He also apparently attended the training camps in Afghanistan and swore loyalty to bin Laden in the summer of 2001. He apparently knows Hani Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). He also is the roommate of Soubra, the main target of the memo. [Los Angeles Times, 1/24/2003; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 521] Discovers that one of them was communicating through an intermediary with Abu Zubaida. This apparently is a reference to Hamed al Sulami, who had been telephoning a Saudi imam known to be Zubaida’s spiritual advisor. Al Sulami is an acquaintance of Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 520-521, 529] Discusses connections between several of the students and a radical group called Al-Muhajiroun. [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002] This group supported bin Laden, and issued a fatwa, or call to arms, that included airports on a list of acceptable terror targets. [Associated Press, 5/22/2002] Soubra, the main focus of the memo, is a member of Al-Muhajiroun and an outspoken radical. He met with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of Al-Muhajiroun in Britain, and started an Arizona chapter of the organization. After 9/11, some US officials will suspect that Soubra has ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He will be held two years, then deported to Lebanon in 2004. [Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2001; Los Angeles Times, 1/24/2003; Arizona Republic, 5/2/2004; Arizona Monthly, 11/2004] Though Williams doesn’t include it in his memo, in the summer of 1998, Bakri publicized a fax sent by bin Laden to him that listed al-Qaeda’s four objectives in fighting the US. The first objective was “bring down their airliners.”
(see Summer 1998). [Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2001] Warns of a possible “effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges” [Fortune, 5/22/2002] , so they can later hijack aircraft. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002] Recommends that the “FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities and colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBI [headquarters] should discuss this matter with other elements of the US intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix’s suspicions.” [Arizona Republic, 7/24/2003] (The FBI has already done this, but because of poor FBI communications, Williams is not aware of the report.) Recommends that the FBI ask the State Department to provide visa data on flight school students from Middle Eastern countries, which will facilitate FBI tracking efforts. [New York Times, 5/4/2002]The memo is addressed to the following FBI Agents: Dave Frasca, chief of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters; Elizabeth Harvey Matson, Mark Connor and Fred Stremmel, Intelligence Operations Specialists in the RFU; Rod Middleton, acting chief of the Usama bin Laden Unit (UBLU); Jennifer Maitner, an Intelligence Operations Specialist in the UBLU; Jack Cloonan, an agent on the New York FBI’s bin Laden unit, the I-49 squad; (see January 1996 and Spring 2000). Michael S. Butsch, an agent on another New York FBI squad dealing with other Sunni terrorists. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/10/2001 ; US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 ]However, the memo is not uploaded into the FBI’s information system until the end of the month and is apparently not received by all these people (see July 27, 2001 and after). Williams also shares some concerns with the CIA (see (July 27, 2001)). [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002] One anonymous government official who has seen the memo says, “This was as actionable a memo as could have been written by anyone.” [Insight, 5/27/2002] However, the memo is merely marked “routine,” rather than “urgent.” It is generally ignored, not shared with other FBI offices, and the recommendations are not taken. One colleague in New York replies at the time that the memo is “speculative and not very significant.” [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002; US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 ] Williams is unaware of many FBI investigations and leads that could have given weight to his memo. Authorities later claim that Williams was only pursuing a hunch, but one familiar with classified information says, “This was not a vague hunch. He was doing a case on these guys.” [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002]

On July 10, 2001, Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memorandum to FBI headquarters urging a nationwide check on Middle Eastern students at flight schools (see July 10, 2001), but apparently neither Williams nor anyone else actually conducts any kind of check on Phoenix flight schools at this time. Phoenix flight school managers will later claim that the FBI does not ask them for tips on suspicious students before 9/11. A Sawyer School manager apparently had suspicions about some of his students (though he does not mention alleged Flight 77 pilot Hani Hanjour specifically). He later will say that had he known the FBI was concerned that some students might be Islamic militants, “I would have called someone.” Another flight school manager claims he has a good relationship with the FBI and is surprised he is not asked about Williams’s concerns. He will complain, “Should flight schools be clairvoyant?” [New York Times, 5/24/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 529] In fact, although Hanjour left Arizona in March 2001 and lived on the East Coast after that time, there is evidence he comes back for some flight training in the Phoenix area in June and August 2001, including at the Sawyer School (see Summer 2001). The 9/11 Commission will later note that the evidence of Hanjour training in Phoenix during the summer is not definitive, but “the FBI’s Phoenix office believes it is plausible that Hanjour return[s] to Arizona for additional training.” [New York Times, 5/24/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 529] It does not appear that Williams or any other FBI official checks flight schools anywhere else in Arizona before 9/11.

9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi pays for a few hours of ground and flying time at Kemper Aviation in Lantana, Florida. According to a document used as evidence at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, on the first day, “Alshehhi could not answer basic questions on the written aviation test, which he needed an instructor’s assistance to complete.” Alshehhi returns on July 30 and August 8, when he rents a plane for approximately one hour. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 66 ] Alshehhi is accompanied by an unknown man on August 8. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001 ] The FBI will visit the school on September 12, seizing all records of pilots from Saudi Arabia. Over a year later, the FBI will renew its interest in a Saudi, Turki al-Masri, who attended the school around the same time as Alshehhi, but the reason for the renewed interest is not known. [ABC News, 1/23/2003]

Abdulaziz Alomari. [Source: FBI]9/11 hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari tests airline security while flying across the US. He boards USAir flight 608 from Las Vegas to New York City. Before the flight takes off, he tells a flight attendant that he is a pilot and wants to sit in the jumpseat (a spare seat in the cockpit) to observe the pilots for the whole flight. When asked for his pilot credentials, he says he is just a student pilot. Alomari is allowed in the cockpit, but only for a short while before take-off. The pilots get the impression he doesn’t know much about flying. Half way through the flight, he tries to get back into the cockpit by claiming that he’d lost a valuable pen while in there earlier, but he is not allowed back in. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 296-297] Although this story is not confirmed by other sources, several of the hijackers do fly to and from Las Vegas at this time (see May 24-August 14, 2001 and August 1, 2001). Apparently the hijackers repeatedly attempt to ride on jumpseats in the summer of 2001 and are sometimes successful, sometimes not (see Summer 2001). Some news stories after 9/11 will allege that the hijackers did use jumpseats on 9/11 (see November 23, 2001).

Hani Hanjour. [Source: FBI]9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour goes to the Freeway Airport in Bowie, Maryland, about 20 miles west of Washington. He wants to rent a single engine Cessna airplane. However, when two instructors take him on three test runs, they find he has trouble controlling and landing the plane. One instructor has to help him land. Due to his poor skills, therefore, he is not allowed to rent one of their planes without more lessons. Further, while Hanjour appears to have logged over 600 hours of flying experience and possesses a valid pilot’s license (though it has in fact expired), he refuses to provide contact information: He gives no phone number and only gives his address as being a hotel in Laurel. In spite of Hanjour’s lack of flying skills, chief instructor Marcel Bernard later claims, “There’s no doubt in my mind that once [Flight 77] got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it.” [Capital News, 9/19/2001; Gazette (Greenbelt), 9/21/2001; Newsday, 9/23/2001; Washington Post, 10/15/2001] However, on 9/11, in piloting Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hanjour would have needed to do much more than simply point the plane at a target. Because Flight 77 at first seemed to overshoot its target, the Washington Post will note that “the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level.… Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm.” [Washington Post, 9/12/2001] One Washington air traffic controller will later comment, “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.” [ABC News, 10/24/2001] One law enforcement official who will study Flight 77’s descent after 9/11 will call it the work of “a great talent… virtually a textbook turn and landing.” [Washington Post, 9/10/2002] Remarkably, the 9/11 Commission will overlook the numerous accounts of Hanjour’s terrible piloting skills (see April 15, 1999 and January-February 2001) and state that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed assigned the Pentagon target specifically to Hanjour because he was “the operation’s most experienced pilot.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 530]

Palm Beach Flight Training. [Source: Sarah Dussault / Sun Sentinel]On August 16, 2001, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta arrives at Palm Beach Flight Training, located at an airport in the town of Lantana, southeast Florida. According to Marian Smith, the flight school’s owner, Atta says he wants to get in 100 hours in the air. [Miami Herald, 9/13/2001] He already accumulated about 300 hours of flying time during his earlier training. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001; Time, 9/30/2001] Smith describes him as being “well-spoken, well-dressed,” and says, “He seemed normal to me.” [Local 10 News (Miami), 9/13/2001; Miami Herald, 9/13/2001] Atta rents a single-engine Piper Archer. He makes his first flight accompanied by an instructor. Having demonstrated his competence, he returns the following day and again two days later. Each time he has a different companion who flies with him. The identities of these men are unknown, but Smith will later recollect that none of them was among the men identified as 9/11 hijackers. [Miami Herald, 9/13/2001; Chicago Tribune, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/14/2001] On his final day at the school, Atta is heard speaking in Arabic over the plane’s radio. An instructor who speaks Arabic himself hears him happily exclaim, “God is great!” [Observer, 12/23/2001] Workers at the school suspect nothing criminal about Atta, though. [Washington Post, 9/14/2001]

9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour successfully conducts “a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg, Maryland, landing at a small airport with a difficult approach,” according to the 9/11 Commission Report. The instructor, Eddie Shalev, thinks that “Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation.” However, it is unclear what certification the 9/11 Commission thinks Hanjour receives. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 248, 531] Shalev is an Israeli national and has a military background. He began working at Congressional Air Charters in April 2001. [9/11 Commission, 4/9/2004] A stipulation used as evidence at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui will mention the flight, but fail to mention any certification Hanjour allegedly receives based on it, merely saying it is a “check ride with a flight instructor.” Hanjour will subsequently rent aircraft from the company on August 26 and 28. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 68 ]

Rudi Dekkers, owner of Huffman Aviation—the Venice, Florida flight school attended by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi—faces a series of legal suits. On August 23, 2001, a former female employee initiates a suit to enforce the settlement of a charge of “severe” sexual harassment by Dekkers. Huffman Aviation earlier agreed to pay her $15,000 in return for her not suing them. [Charlotte Sun, 10/3/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] In August 2002, Dekkers’ former business partner Wally Hilliard files a suit, claiming Dekkers has failed to repay several loans, including one for $1.7 million, and also owes money for Huffman stock he sold him. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 8/24/2002] In January 2003, the state attorney’s office files criminal fraud charges against Dekkers for securing a loan of $200,000 with a mortgage on property his company had no legal interest in. The suit could result in a five-year prison sentence, but is later dismissed. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/18/2003; Associated Press, 1/22/2003; Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/25/2003; Venice Gondolier Sun, 12/6/2003] And in April 2004, along with Hilliard, he is accused of making as many as 26 unauthorized passenger flights during 1999, and faces a fine of up to $286,000. [Associated Press, 4/14/2004] In July 2004, the St. Petersburg Times will comment that Dekkers “continues to drive expensive vehicles and live in a million-dollar waterfront home, even though a Naples lawyer had ‘to chase him around’ to get him to pay a $359 judgment.” Even before 2001, Dekkers had a history of troubled businesses and being the subject of legal suits. In spite of this, following 9/11 he becomes a much sought-after figure by the media, later remarking, “I’m always on television somewhere.” He is even invited to testify before Congress regarding the two hijackers’ attendance at his flight school. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; Venice Gondolier Sun, 8/24/2002; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004]

Future 9/11 hijacker Fayez Ahmed Banihammad attempts to get into an airplane cockpit on a test flight across the US, according to flight attendant Gregory McAleer. McAleer is employed by United Airlines. He will later claim to the 9/11 Commission that on August 30, 2001, he is working on Flight 514, a Boeing 737-300 flying from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Logan Airport in Boston. Strange Encounter - Early in the boarding process a Middle Eastern male enters the airplane with a “jump seat” pass. This pass allows the person to sit in the jump seat, an extra seat in the airplane’s cockpit. Typically, only licensed pilots employed by US domestic airlines are given these passes. The man is not dressed in a pilot’s uniform, but wears casual clothes and carries a suitcase. McAleer sees this man entering the cockpit and talking to the pilot and copilot. After a few moments, the man leaves the cockpit and takes a seat in the coach section. McAleer is curious and asks the pilot about the man. The pilot says the man can’t use the jump seat since he doesn’t have the proper ID. Later in the flight, McAleer has a chance to question the man while both of them are waiting to use the lavatory. The man claims to be a pilot for a regional airline, but when McAleer, who has a pilot’s license, asks him questions about his job and his knowledge of flying, the answers don’t add up and the man also asks him some suspicious questions. McAleer finds the man’s behavior so suspicious that he wonders at the time if he could be a terrorist. FBI and United Airlines Not that Interested - Several days after 9/11, McAleer will contact the FBI’s Chicago field office about the incident. An FBI agent takes his information, but does not seem very interested or even comprehending about the jump seat idea. Several days after that, McAleer describes the incident to a United Airlines flight attendant supervisor. After conferring with a manager, the supervisor tells him: “Do not talk to the FBI again. I went to [United Airlines assistant station manager] Mitch Gross and he told me to tell you not to talk to the FBI again. If you have any concerns you can call the [United Airlines] Crisis Center. The FBI agents are working on the case.” McAleer gives the information by phone to the Crisis Center, but he still is unsatisfied. He later tells the story to Gross, and Gross tells him, “You are not to talk to anyone about this.” On September 27, 2001, McAleer will read a local newspaper article that shows the pictures of all of the 9/11 hijackers for the first time (see September 27, 2001), and he quickly concludes that hijacker Fayez Ahmed Banihammad was the suspicious man who had flown on Flight 514. McAleer continues to try to raise the issue, for instance with United Airlines corporate security, but without much success. FBI Stops Media Coverage - Eventually, McAleer will come in contact with a USA Today reporter named Blake Morrison. After checking with the FBI, Morrison decides to write a story about McAleer’s experience. However, at the last minute, the FBI contacts Morrison and asks him not to run the article. As a result, the article only runs in the international edition of USA Today, on June 12, 2002. Morrison later tells McAleer that an FBI source told him that Banihammad’s name was not on the flight manifest. This does not surprise McAleer, since people using jump seat passes or companion passes are not usually on the manifest. The 9/11 Commission will not mention McAleer’s story at all, and will dismiss the jumpseating issue in general. [9/11 Commission, 8/12/2003 ]Legal Implications - There will be reports that other 9/11 hijackers used test flights to try to get into cockpits, and some tried to sit in jump seats (see November 23, 2001 and November 23, 2001). There will also be reports that jump seats were used by the hijackers in the 9/11 attacks (see September 24, 2001 and November 23, 2001).
Jumpseating will become a contentious issue, because if it could be shown that the 9/11 hijackers were able to get into cockpits using jump seats, American Airlines and United Airlines could be sued for significant damages. In fact, McAleer’s account will later be used in a 9/11 negligence lawsuit against United Airlines. In 2011, it will be reported that attorneys in the lawsuit are attempting to depose the agents who interviewed McAleer, but the Justice Department is refusing to let the agents testify. [WBUR NPR Boston, 1/31/2011]

9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar are seen to practice using flight simulator software while at an apartment in San Diego. A neighbor will later say he often saw a computer switched on inside the men’s apartment running a flight simulator program, “I could look in, if the door was open. You could always see a flight simulator type of thing, with airplanes on it.” According to eyewitnesses, this takes place shortly before 9/11. Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived in San Diego in 2000 (see January 15-February 2000 and February 2000-Early September 2001), but are usually thought to be on the East Coast in the summer of 2001 (see August 27-September 1, 2001 and September 5-10, 2001). However, there are multiple eyewitness reports of them being seen in the San Diego area around this time, back in the same apartment where they had lived in 2000 (see Early September 2001). [KGTV 10 (San Diego), 9/14/2001; KGTV 10 (San Diego), 9/18/2001]

Lofti Raissi. [Source: Amnesty International]Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot living in Britain, is arrested and accused of helping to train four of the hijackers. An FBI source says, “We believe he is by far the biggest find we have had so far. He is of crucial importance to us.” [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 9/29/2001] However, in April 2002, a judge dismisses all charges against him, calling the charges “tenuous.” US officials originally said, “They had video of him with Hani Hanjour, who allegedly piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon; records of phone conversations between the two men; evidence that they had flown a training plane together; and evidence that Raissi had met several of the hijackers in Las Vegas. It turned out, the British court found, that the video showed Raissi with his cousin, not Mr. Hanjour, that Raissi had mistakenly filled in his air training logbook and had never flown with Hanjour, and that Raissi and the hijackers were not in Las Vegas at the same time. The US authorities never presented any phone records showing conversations between Raissi and Hanjour. It appears that in this case the US authorities handed over all the information they had…” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/27/2002; Guardian, 9/26/2005] Raissi later says he will sue the British and American governments unless he is given a “widely publicized apology” for his months in prison and the assumption of “guilty until proven innocent.” [Reuters, 8/14/2002] In September 2003, he does sue both governments for $20 million. He also wins a undisclosed sum from the British tabloid Mail on Sunday for printing false charges against him. [Guardian, 9/16/2003; BBC, 10/7/2003; Arizona Republic, 10/14/2003] Declassified documents will later reveal that the British arrested Raissi only days after the FBI requested that the British discretely monitor and investigate him, not arrest him. [Guardian, 9/26/2005] Raissi perfectly matches the description of an individual mentioned in FBI agent Ken Williams’ “Phoenix memo” (see July 10, 2001), whom the FBI had attempted to investigate in May 2001 (see 1997-July 2001).

Six months after 9/11, a Venice, Florida flight school attended by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi belatedly receives visa approval forms for the alleged hijackers. The two had been required to apply for student visas before entering a professional flight training program. Their applications were sent from the school, Huffman Aviation, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in August or September 2000 (see (August 29-September 15, 2000)). The forms show that the INS approved the visas in July and August 2001, clearing both men to stay in the US until October 1, 2001. Spokesman Russ Bergeron says the INS notified the two shortly afterwards. Despite Atta and Alshehhi’s alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks, an INS clerk issued their visas in October 2001. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) comments, “This shows once again the complete incompetence of the immigration service to enforce our laws and protect our borders.” [Charlotte Sun, 3/13/2002; St. Petersburg Times, 3/13/2002]

Daniel Hopsicker. [Source: Daniel Hopsicker]A book examining the life of Mohamed Atta while he lived in Florida in 2000 is published. Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida, is by Daniel Hopsicker, an author, documentary maker, and former business news producer. Hopsicker spent two years in Venice, Florida, where several of the 9/11 hijackers went to flight school, and spoke to hundreds of people who knew them. His account portrays Atta as a drinking, drug-taking, party animal, strongly contradicting the conventional view of Atta having been a devout Muslim. He interviewed Amanda Keller, a former stripper who claims to have briefly been Atta’s girlfriend in Florida. Keller describes trawls through local bars with Atta, and how he once cut up her pet kittens in a fit of anger. The book also alleges that the CIA organized an influx of Arab students into Florida flight schools in the period prior to 9/11, and that a major drug smuggling operation was centered around the Venice airfield while Atta was there. [Deutsche Welle (Bonn), 4/30/2004; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 7/11/2005] It also implicates retired businessman Wally Hilliard, the owner of Huffman Aviation, as the owner of a Lear jet that in July 2000 was seized by federal agents after they found 43 pounds of heroin onboard. [Long Island Press, 2/26/2004; Green Bay Press-Gazette, 3/22/2004] The book is a top ten bestseller in Germany. [Hopsicker, 2004; Deutsche Welle (Bonn), 4/30/2004]

On November 25, 2007, the London Times publishes an article about Luai Sakra, an al-Qaeda leader imprisoned in Turkey who allegedly was also a CIA informant before 9/11 (see September 10, 2001). The Times reports, “According to Sakra, [9/11 hijacker] Nawaf Alhazmi was a veteran operative who went on to pilot the plane that hit the Pentagon [Flight 77]. Although this is at odds with the official account, which says the plane was flown by another hijacker, it is plausible and might answer one of the mysteries of 9/11,” namely, why the FBI claims Hani Hanjour was the pilot of that plane, when many reports suggest Hanjour was a bad pilot. [London Times, 11/25/2007] Although none of the official accounts such as the 9/11 Commission report claim that Alhazmi was a pilot, there is considerable evidence to suggest that he was: In December 1999, Alhazmi was taught how to use a computer flight simulator program while in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan (see Early December 1999). On April 4, 2000, Alhazmi took one day’s worth of flying lessons, and his instructor later claims he did quite well and was already almost capable of taking off and landing on his own (see April 4, 2000). One month later, he took a second one day flying lesson, however his instructor will later call him “dumb” and unskilled (see May 5 and 10, 2000). Near the end of 2000, he told two unconnected associates that he was in Arizona and learning to fly with Hanjour (see (December 2000-January 2001)). On March 19, 2001, he bought flight deck videos for Boeing 747s and a Boeing 777 (see November 5, 2000-June 20, 2001). On March 23, 2001, he bought an aeronautical chart covering the northeastern US (see March 23, 2001). In July 2001, he and Hanjour appear to have rented an aircraft together in New Jersey. Alhazmi’s credit card was used to pay for the aircraft rental, as well as fuel in Maryland (a072001haninawafflight). Neighbors will later claim that just days before the 9/11 attacks, Alhazmi was practicing flying on a computer flight simulator program. [KGTV 10 (San Diego), 9/14/2001] In 2002, al-Qaeda associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh will claim in an interview several months before his arrest that Alhazmi was one of the 9/11 pilots.

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